Motives Quotes

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

For a war to be just, three conditions are necessary—public authority, just cause, right motive.

The world looks different and is understood differently at every spot on earth. Without accepting this simple truth it is hard for us to grasp the behavior of others, the motives and aims of those actions.

All of us try to persuade our fellow citizens to see our point of view and that is the way public opinion is created in a democracy. It seems to me, however, we might achieve our aim with a little less violent invective and blackening of the individual character, for on both sides motives are probably good. The real difference is in the methods that are advocate.

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

I am not a political writer. I agree with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, who are social writers. I can't write in that fashion. I am not good enough for that. What I am interested in is family dramas and why we are doing bad things to each other and what our motives are.

Deciding whether a contribution is corrupt is difficult without knowing the motives of the donor.

One can be in business and pursue bad profit. That is, by practicing cronyism—rigging the system to undermine competition, innovation and opportunity, making others worse off. Good profit should lead you to improve your ability to help others improve their lives. But that’s not how many businesses act today.

Party politics in modern democratic society means pandering to a wide variety of different groups and sympathizing with their often quite base motives, such as revenge, power, booty, and spoils, to maintain the necessary level of support.

President Obama, I think, wanted what was best for the country, but I think it didn't work well. I think we have the death spiral, and I think particularly premiums in the individual market are going through the roof. Republicans want what's best for the country, but I think they're not fixing the death spiral of Obamacare. They're going to subsidize it with a lot of taxpayer money. So, characterizing something as mean or generous I think goes to people's motives, and I think it is sort of why we have such an angry country now. We think that people have ill motives.

People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals - that is, goals that do not inspire them.

I do not impugn the motives of any one opposed to me

Reveal Richard Nixon … lay him and his motives bare … destroy him in his shot for the Presidency.

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we're doing.

The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motive.

See a person's means ... Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character?

There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.

The more reasons you have for achieving your goal, the more determined you will become.

When self-interested motives are strengthened by the apprehension of any danger, there are few persons who will not be induced by them to betray even their best friend.

I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.

Circumstances of crimes vary. So do motives. And so do prospects for rehabilitation. The number of imponderables makes it impossible to sentence by formula and still sentence justly.

The important thing about human beings is not what they do, but why they do it.

The powers specially vested in me by the act laying certain duties on distilled spirits, … have likewise [been] carried into effect…. The novelty, however, of the tax in a considerable part of the United States and a misconception of some of its provisions have given occasion in particular places to some degree of discontent; but it is satisfactory to know that this disposition yields to proper explanations and more just apprehensions of the true nature of the law, and I entertain a full confidence that it will in all give way to motives which arise out of a just sense of duty and a virtuous regard to the public welfare.

The force which makes for war does not derive its strength from the interested motives of evil men; it derives its strength from the disinterested motives of good men.

Politicians, even if their motives are not of the purest, come much nearer performing their duties than the so-called "good" citizens who stay at home [on Election Day.]